Spamming Activities Rise Globally in August 2007

Spamming operations are showing no signs of decline. Secure Computing Corporation, a gateway security company for enterprises, announced on August 17, 2007 that its TrustedSource Lab has seen a considerable growth in spam operations in Asia and rest of the world. The growth started from early August 2007 reaching a peak of 53% above the daily average in July and 70% above that of June.

88% of total e-mail in August 2007 has been spam making a record high level in its volume. Of this, 11% has been PDF spam. zombie infections amounted to 380,000 pieces a day.

Spammers are using ever-more sophisticated methods to try and elude anti-spam systems. As spam surges in the Asian continent, enterprises must urgently and proactively protect their networks. It is apprehended that spam might rise as high as 90% in the coming months. The most effective way to prevent infiltration of spam into enterprise network is to use filtering systems at the enterprise gateway together with reputed security systems, said Benjamin Low, MD for Southeast Asia and India, Secure Computing, in his company press release. Smbedge published the press release on August 17, 2007.

Spam levels have spiked recently due to the massive and destructive Storm worm attacks, increase in stock spam with attachments of Excel, PDF or ZIP formats, and Web-based malware through phony e-greeting card e-mails.

Also, results based on aggregated data from the SonicWALL Smart Network for April-July 2007 show the ongoing rise in spam volume, virus carrying e-mails and phishing threats, use of more PDF spam, and the rise and emergence of ZIP and Excel spam. SonicWALL's Smart Network gathered data from more than 1.3 Million e-mail users.

PDF spam shows how spammers continuously innovate new techniques that effectively avoid anti-spam detection and lure employees into clicking e-mails that pretend to be authentic business letters, said Andrew Klein, senior product manager for SonicWALL's E-mail Security division, in his company press release. PR Newswire published this release on August 13, 2007.

In another recent report, Secure Computing observed that backdoor trojans and information-stealing threats remain the most serious threats and are increasing profusely.